I've just bought the gama and can't wait to get my hands on it
Since I'm way overexcited, I'm thinking in terms of my own idea of what the perfect 4x star game would be, what would you like to see in such a game? I wonder if some of these will be part of GC3...
- 3D-Galaxy with stars and planets not on a flat map but in three dimensions, plus star map functionality to quickly highlight things (say sector maps, fleet movements, civilian vessels etc., think Caliban from Mike Resnick's birthright)
- The option to generate immense maps, think Distant Worlds with thousands of stars and tens of thousand of planets, if you wanted to
- The option to have more AI opponents, this kinda goes with the larger galaxies, say 40 opponents and the option for some of these to be vastly different (say some can only live in gas giants and you can exterminate every living thing on such a planet but you cannot colonize it, races that can only inhabit, say, red giants etc, think Kevin Anderson's Saga of the seven suns)
- More freedom to come up with surprising solutions (say thew way you can teleport an entire station through an unstable wormhole in Haegemonia)
- Full tactical battle mode - the option to choose whether you direct the battle yourself or delegate that fully or partially to the AI, say I want to personally attend to the invasion of a star system as the outcome of the battle is be crucial, but I want the AI to take care of search and destroy mission to handle two pirate fighters in an asteroid belt). Say the game can switch between full RTS mode if you choose full tactical battle mode or auto as it is in GC2 now.
- Battle mode in 3d (as in freedom of movement in three directions), think Homeworld-like battles plus terrain bonuses/obstacles (say you can use an steroid belt to your advantage or the gravity well of a planet or the radiation of a star), think Ender's game on steroids
- More sophisticated ship building options
- More complicated tech trees and interdependancy and synergy of the techs in plus more race-centric variations
- More control over planetary invasions if you choose to
I agree with Seleuceia.
It's partially a role playing game (as any immersive 4X strategy game should be). Long lasting consequences are an integral part of the GalCiv universe. Your alignment choices at the beginning of the game can increase or nullify the cost of choosing your ethics in mid game. If you make the evil choices early and later decide you want to be good, it'll cost you. If you go ahead and choose evil ethics later, you might be a pariah.
If you don't get a feel for the personality of the game, I think you're missing out.
A TBS with absolutely zero RTS elements. At no point in the game should faster clicking result in an advantage.
That said, I hope multiplayer gets attention. Design multiplayer like you were actually going to compete in multiplayer rather than making it a feature just to appease a certain small group of people. If you build it (right), they will come.
Have to confess its been a while since I fired up GC2
But looking ahead? LOOK BACK. Home world style combat. The sheer 3D volume of space in which your fleets maneuvered, formations you could create.....
Not sure how the programing is going to be on GC3. But and its a huge but I now it would be nice to be able to:
1) Determine the fixed objects in 3D Space. Place your planet (if battle is near one) and then the orbital fortresses. Attacking fleet gets in beam/missile range of the plant it can join in the fun.
2) Place the fleets. Depending on the attackers tech the closer they could "warp" into the gravity well of the system star.
3) Determine if said fleets are all there at the same time. Combat time delay allowing a second fleet to warp in in the middle of combat.
Use RTS or RT for combat? Pause Real Turn Combat?
Its a dream thread but to actually see large scale fleets in a huge 3D tank turning and burning. Oh yes. MOO2 had the flat combat but it still is a blast closing on that last enemy ship and watching its engine explode.
MOST IMPORTANT THING IS 3D!!!! MAKE IT 3D LIKE SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE!!!!!
We all love Sins of a Solar Empire, but honestly you can only play that game so long until you are like 10 min into the game and you already know of you are going to win or not. That would never happen with a 4x game like Galactic Civilizations. There is a new game out called StarDrive which is great 4x game but it was released too early and when I played it had a lot of bugs, I don't know how it is now, BUT I am hopping that Galactic Civ III will blow it away, and that would def happen if it was 3d. Would it even bee a lot more work since you guys already make Sins???
I totally agree and i think we should be able to design the different fighters as well for the carriers
GalCiv II with all expansion packs was pretty much the best 4x experience ever for me. The only thing it lacked, was deeper internal politics screen (I liked the voting thing, but it was pretty shallow ;< Would love something more...sophisticated.) and actual combat with orders etc.
I absolutely loved the random/global events. They were outstanding! Ship creator was another very nice thing (But it was kinda pointless with that combat :<) and I really liked the universe/races. If you guys would be able to achieve GC II+exp. packs level of things and won't make it streamlined and casual, Im totally bought.
Sins of a solar empire is more like 2.5 D...just saying...
Like every 4X strategy game I have played they lack the complexity I crave. I want huge galaxies with thousands of planets with so many complexities that you almost can't cope lol. I want an economy that needs varying resources and gathered by different means such as different transport ships, moon mining, asteroid mining, planet breaking etc. I want a complex marketplace where you can buy, trade etc.
I want a powerful diplomacy system where I can actually type replies to the AI and it respond accordingly. I always hated the AI saying things to me that I wish I could tell it where to go stick it lol.
I want planets to mean much more. They should each play an integral part to the game. The ability to set up trade lanes, trade ports, to truly be able to build a realistic galactic empire. I want to feel fully immersed in the game. I want a tech tree that you can only research certain elements as long as you have access to certain materials.
Battles need to be fully 3D where I can control the battle or let the AI do it. I know I want more but can't think right now. Good start though lol.
I would like to see more race-specific technology trees. Examples would include:
These could not be traded with other races, unless the receiving races are also capable of using the same technology trees.
Other "shareable" technology trees could be:
I'm curius what is a Turn based stradegy game with Real time stradegy elements. I think Sins of a solar empire like game with everyone is good for multiplayer. Still want a turn based for single player.
Hi,
I would be in favor of a better resources management system.
More resources;
- precious metals (gold, platinium, zrinium, trunium, ...)
- base metals (xxxyynium, zkwytium. etc)
- energy resources (a couple of different energy resources)
- other strategic resources (etc.)
Resources could be researched and extracted on any planets including class 0 and on asteroids.
I would also vote for a better economics and trade system based on resources trade.
I also loke the idea of adding a role-playing component to th egame with leaders (in a crusaders kings-like system). Leaders, ministers, admirals, colonels, great scientists, businessmen, artists, terrorists, etc.
its early days in my thoughts here about what i'd like to see so watch this for edits but initially,i'd like to see;
i) a multiplayer element which rewards how you perform with your allies...generosity rewarding you. maybe playing with the same guys again will reward you but not overly so or it could be abused. weaker team members maybe get a small boost to balance teams out.
ii) a multiplayer element like age of empires where depending on your race for what your team gets, you get a seperate team boost.
iii) a stats tracker where if you play the same race repeatedly you get a bonus so it goes a bit like dota2 so we have guys preferring a certain race instead of a just who should i be today attitude. (admittedly with dota2 its because there's so many characters but the idea of player's being proud that they always prefer to go race x i think is good-makes a nice bit of competitive spirit.)
iv) infrastructure that with stats tracker it feels more like a competitive community instead of a lot of individuals looking for their own games to play.
v) with all this in mind, each race although having it's own strengths and weaknesses to be as competitive against each other as possible, so as time goes on obviously will need tweaking.
vi) sorry stardock for saying this and putting it on you (but lol you can only say no(spacetosaynoremoved:))), but i'd like stardock to organise a competitive league thus putting their effort and commitment fully behind the game. i know its normally heres the game and our next involvement is the next update but lets be honest everyone or most people who played galciv2 thought great game or very good game but where's the mp element...rather than 'here's our mp element', id like them to unfurl the banners and start waving the banners hoping for a 'wow, look at that mp element' from other designers.
vii) i would like ability to put a little completely personal thing on my designed ships even if its just something designed from 16 pixels to sit under the cockpit or on a wing or is that thrust vectorer (lol who knows).
viii) ok not fully with how far you can go into designing your own ships but if its extensive id like to see regular external game competitions to choose best ship designs (maybe a screencap or something as entry) hosted by stardock but voted on by community and the winning design maybe go to an end of 6 month or end of year competition where the winning ships compete for inclusion in the next update as a cpu (ai) ship design and they also get the ability to name that ship (supplying 3 choices which the powers that be can choose from)
ix) going on the generosity thing in i) maybe winning teams get a bonus or something for subsequent games but they can only give it to a fellow team member if they choose to once theyve decided which team theyre on or if they choose not to issue it out they can hold it for another time and possibly stack it with another win but risk losing all theyve stacked in wins if they ever lose whilst holding onto the issue bonus...would make playersthink, what a nice guy or boo hiss, why's he not issued me his bonus...an added gameplay element.
x) the ability to give ships or at least fleets in a game to an ally so its like you handle the green guy and here take my fleet star destroyer 1 along too. let us know if yer having problems.
xi) with x) in mind, ability to nominate who takes which opponents ingame and for game to state it but yup could be easily accomplished just through chat but ingame benefits for such and progress related i think would be cool.
xii) yup im going too heavily into mp element but why not. galciv2 is still one of my fave games so without any of this above happening, even if mp sucks, im sure galciv3 still will be good.
(apologies if a lot of this is all ready in game on one side or on other, totally impossible but lol i can only say)
Update: just read the excerpts from Brad interview to Strategy Informer- the Ship Designer sounds a lot lot better than i expected but am a little bit disappointed the phrase 'it's primarily a single player game' or close to that was used...ive played galciv2 and was well aware..its just needing to say it..the mp aspect sounds like its getting downplayed..a tad disappointing but well no worries
@MichaelWhittaker below, yes personal, i was thinking a unique item design like yup maybe a flag which would seperate it from everybody else's designs but from reading what was said in the interview i think the Ship Designer is going to be light years away and better than what i expected so disregard my bit there but your items bit for teams sounds cool . As regards the give ships to allies my apologies there, it's been a while since i played galciv2... ive been, whats the words, flitting around from sword of the stars 2 to endless space to sins onto other things like eve and dota2.i also downloaded moo3 from an old games website and i think jupiterincident, lol im all over place as regards alternative game's to play..my memory's not the best, all i remember is galciv2 was one of my favourite games and jumped at opportunity to be onboard early with galciv3.
In a perfect 4X game?
Sword of the Star's tactical combat (I'll be interested in what Gav Civ III's combat will be like - I personally found it a bit bland in the previous games) attached to something somewhere between Giv Civ II and Moo3 as the out-of-combat engine.
Moo3, while a lot of people give it a bad wrap (and I only ever played it well after the patches and mods wer abundant, and I never played ny of the others in the series to compare), I quite liked. For one, the ridiculously expansive tech tree meant that I was oblidged to actually got out and expand and get into war early on (rather than do what I do in almost everything else, wich expand and then tech up), even on the low difficulties that I prefer to play on. It had a great sense of scale. That said, the UI and the amount of micromanagement required was problematic - in an empire of 500 planets (half of the galaxy in my last game), I tended to just halt production completely save the top fifty or so. I liked the way Moo3's planet worked in theory - in practise, after micromanageing my first planet, though, I'd let the rest go on their own. So it could also be a victim of it's own scale as well! (It also had a great deal of other flaws, of course!)
Gal Civ's more Civilisation-like system I think was much more friendly to use - and Gal Civ had a lot more character in play. Moo has a wonderful background, but a fairly banal presence in game. This is true of most of the 4Xs, but Gal Civ shirked the trend a bit with the moral choice system on your newly-occupied planets being at least good for a laugh.
That said, I really want the good/evil options to be more weighted in Gal Civ 3. I NEVER foudn myself picking the good options, as there never seemed to be any benefits: it was "be nice and take penalties or be evil and get bonuses" and the only reason to consider the latter was presumably for diplomacy of getting the good-specific techs (I never thought they seemed worth THAT much though.) Making the choices have different bonuses (though not all sets of choices should be equal all the time) for good or evil would I think be a much better option, or at least give the good options something considerably more obvious as an alternative.
So, perfect, I think, would be a blend of SotS and GalCiv ship design, SotS-like starship combat - ground combat more like Moo3, or prefereably something better (neither SotS nor GalCiv, nor for that matter Sins of a Solar Empire handled it very well (or at all!), I felt) on a engine with GalCiv's interface and colour (and improved and balanced), with the scale of Moo3's tech tree.
And a good single-player campaign: though as I have thus far not seen that done especially well in any 4X (though Civilisations many scenarios and Fallen Enchantress:Legendary Heroes have come closest), so I'm not holding my hopes up in that regard too much.
This is some of my thoughts, copied from another thread.
-Ship design is great. More please, Maybe add a couple of additional hull sizes (bigger) to flesh it out a bit more.
-An aircraft carrier type starship/module. Perhaps remove the 'tiny' hull size and start with 'small' then use 'tiny' for groups of fighters from a carrier.
-This would require an overhaul of the space combat mechanics, ie-a carrier typically tries to stay out of range while it sends its fighters off.
-Ground combat/invasions. This was a little bare in gal2, while the invasion support stuff was good, I think Id prefer to be directing units, even somewhat abstractly.
-Which leads into- A variation of ground units would be nice, armour, infantry, artillery perhaps?
-More minor races. Perhaps they can be scripted to expand into mini-empires also, perhaps 3-4 planets max, to give a better challenge if someone wants to conquer them.
-Expand diplomacy. Id like to see more non-warfare treaty options other than trade or research. How about non-aggression treaties to close your space? Have conflicts over borders. My territory littered with other players starbases just seems odd.
-Similarly, greater negotiation options with minors, vassalisation for example might be better than outright conquest in some cases. Might as well add more options like this for majors too.
-While I appreciate the sometimes quirky sense of humour displayed in gal2, a race of giant squirrels???
-Id personally like to see the 'colony rush' style you have to play toned down a bit to a more 'establish one colony then move on' style.
-A starbase should be more rare and a fortress in my opinion. It was too much investment with the endless modules only for them to be destroyed easily without massive investment. Even as a newbie Ive seen most advice steer me away from upgrading starbase defences. Keep resource & economy bases mostly as is but combat bases should be a significant challenge for a fairly large fleet.
-In fact, tone down the whole modules thing in general. If we do have to have loads of upgrades for bases, just pay for them direct, without having to go to the trouble of building streams of constructors.
-Perhaps expand on starbase type units... Defence outposts, orbital weapon systems etc that have to be attacked directly before invasions can be attempted...
-Id like greater control in space battles also, to be able to direct ships or at least issue general orders to specific ships such as 'try to move out of range' (which would be very useful when one ship is taking a beating) or some other broad orders such as- target small ships/target capital ships/all power to defences/all power to weapons etc.
-Some method of retreating from tactical battles would be welcome, obviously smaller more mobile ships would have an easier time of this.
-Endless Space has some really fantastic music, taking a leaf from that book would not be a bad idea.
I'd like for planets that are lured to your side by influence to be more fleshed out. I usually play by conquest using influence and once a planet joined my side there was not a lot that differentiated it from planets that were colonized by my faction. For example depending on the major species on the planet it would have some bonuses and penalties. Or when an entire civilizations switched to your side you could research their unique technologies, they could have increased costs and take longer to research.
Make United Planets play a bigger role. For example have it so that any faction could call a vote on a certain topic, a limit would have to exist so this would not lead to a faction becoming too powerful, say either only once every 20 turns could a civ call a meeting or a sum of credits should be payed since in theory that faction is hosting the location of the summit. Also someway you could influence what other factions voted.
That's a good point, planets that switch or are conquered in gal2, as you say, become just another planet.
To that end I think the planet population should not be used in the invasion defence mechanism, dedicated troop units should have to be stationed to defend a planet. And some of the general population would inevitably get killed in said invasion.
I would like to do something with the class 0 planets also.
more objects then just planets, asteriods and stars to interact with, things like blackholes, nebulas ( in which you could hide a military force to strike or just have mining stations within it and act similar to the asteriods themselfs but remove all sensor abilities within that tile)plasma storms, to investigate just like the spacejunk out there
A couple of things I would like the idea of rewarding u for playing a race. Star trek kind of lets teams buy special items that will improve things. These items r only for your fleet. So in the multiplayer we could have teams like Star trek have fleets. Even though the fleet have to purchase the items U still have to purchase the items. I guess the teams could; also, be rewarded points for doing things, and if they got enough points they would; also get other things these would not neccasarily purchased.
When U mean a personal thing do U mean a flag. Windows comes with paint can'r we import this to add things to things relatively easy. Windows is made to scan things. These 2 items r there in memory cause of windows why don't we add this to the game. I also would like to be able to import graphics from the internet easily.
U can already give anyone ships u want through the diplomacy screen if u meant them and researched universal translator. Do u mean without traveling to their space from your space. I would like the ability to lend ships for the duration of the war, and if they survived then they would be returned to u. As far as transports they would have to put troops in them. This would be paralel to the world war 2's lend lease program.
for a perfect gc game...
3D galaxies
"infinite" continuously generated areas of galaxies in a 3D space as you explore them, similar to the way Minecraft generates blocks
Intergalactic space
A slider you use before the game starts that affects the amount of content outside of galaxies(Intergalactic space), such as anomalies, runaway stars/planets/etc.
Wormholes would be rare and have the potential to have disastrous consequences for the ship traveling through it. An example would be being flung into intergalactic space millions of light-years away across several galaxies. Also, throw in the ability to stabilize and continuously use wormholes, both one-way and two-way.
Neutron stars, Quark stars, Black Holes, Pulsars, Supergiants, etc.
Supermassive galaxies
This is part of my dream. Maybe something like this will show up in like..........um...
30 years?
Master of Orion 2, had some good concepts that dealt with taking over another races planets and how those citizens loyalty took some time to lean to you. You had various populations that were not of your base race, etc...I would like that sort of thing explored a bit more.
Hhhmmm. Very interesting Larsenex, that you are getting hangs and crashes on, what, GC2? I just reloaded both GC ultimates onto my latest PC and am having problems with hangs on GC2, often fixed by a new GPU driver from NVidia. They have produced 3 updates in the last month or two for their latest set of display cards, and each update appeared to have an affect on the problems I was having. You may want to check to see if there is an updated driver for your GPU.
I had/have some occasional crashes on GC2, but it has never been a real big issue, it seems to mostly occur when some other program in Windows interrupts GC2 if I have another program running in the back ground. My computer isn't exactly cutting edge at this point, I am looking to get something newer just so that GC3 will run correctly.
There were actually a lot of good ideas postulated some time ago in the GalCiv2 forums for features that people wanted put into the game. Might be a good time to revisit that older forums to dredge some up. I know I posted about 10 or so ideas, and I see a lot of the same ideas popping up again in this new forum.
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